Certainty
by TheHighestPie
Summary: (or: The One Where Combeferre and Stephen Maturin Bitch at Each Other About Politics) My longest fic in ages - and I feel like it's a borderline parody of my style. Crossover, Combeferre-centric, and almost nothing but dialogue about the politics of self-sacrifice. In which Stephen Maturin recognizes too much of himself in his brightest student.


_Stephen Maturin is one of the two main characters in Patrick O'Brian's "Aubreyad", which you might be familiar with through that "Master and Commander" movie. Since he's a left-leaning polymath/naturalist/doctor with strong ties to French science, there's a strain of fanon in LM circles that he spends some time later supervising Combeferre's internship._

_Stephen participated in the first French Revolution but was disillusioned by the Terror. He participated in some other liberal independence movements, but by the time he's travelling with Jack Aubrey, he's lost a lot of his faith in revolutionary action, even though he retains a lot of republican opinions. I tried to imagine what he would be like with a few more decades of crotchety skepticism_

_For Marianne, who may have come up with the fanon in the first place – and for anyone else who understands why Stephen and Combeferre need to be in an argumentative student-mentor brOTP._

* * *

DECEMBER 1830

Doctor Stephen Maturin waited alone in his office, taking notes on the margins of Geoffroy's latest lecture in his indecipherable shorthand. A thin quilt protected him against the chill of the slab by his elbow upon which a corpse sat slowly moldering. He set aside his papers but did not rise from his decadently plush armchair when he finally heard the expected knock.

"Yes? What do you want?"

"It's me, Doctor Maturin. Combeferre," sounded a slightly breathless voice on the other side of the door.

"Well? You're late again," he barked. "Don't just stand around out there; come in. And no, I don't want to hear your excuses."

A turn of the handle, and his favorite and most exasperating student strode in bearing an unflappably polite smile. "Good afternoon, sir. How are you?"

"Yes, yes, you know how I hate pleasantries. Let's see how your autopsy skills are progressing."

"Glad to hear you're well," Combeferre quipped back as he peeled back the sheet covering the slab. "Male, working class, perhaps…30 years of age."

"How did he die?"

Combeferre bit back a confused laugh. "Other than the bullet that entered behind his left ear?"

"Tell me more."

His hands moved lightly over the cadaver. "There's another bullet in his left forearm. Not much time elapsed between the two wounds."

"Other marks?"

"Minor scrapes over the rest of his body, and moderate bruising on the inside of his right shoulder. From the shape and location, I'd guess that he was firing a rifle before he died. Is he from the recent unrest?"

"Precisely. The unclaimed corpse of a rioter."

"Should I cut him open?"

"No, that will be enough with him, for now."

"Hardly an advanced dissection, Doctor."

"No, I plan to use him for a different sort of study. Have a seat."

Combeferre smoothed the sheet back over the cadaver and sat down on the rickety stool next to Maturin's be-cushioned throne.

"It's not often I see talent like yours," Stephen began without preamble. "Perhaps never. That's why I sought you out, on the recommendations of Dupuytren and others. Old friends who know, whose judgments I happily trusted."

A smile began to crack the attentive neutrality of his student's expression.

"And I was right to trust them. Your intellect is unparalleled, and if you keep working as you do, then it will be a crime if you're not named to the Academy of Sciences.

"Which is why it so disappoints me that you're also the biggest fool I've ever seen."

Combeferre gave a full body twitch that precariously rocked his stool. "I…what have I done _now_?"

"Stop looking so wounded, it's unbecoming. Listen, I know all about your political activities, which is no surprise given how little effort you make to conceal your sympathies." Combeferre gave another twitch. "No, stop looking around; I wouldn't be so foolish as to talk about them where someone could overhear and report the fact that you're looking to get yourself killed."

Combeferre, to his credit, at least did not try to deny it. "How?"

"I was much like you – too much like you – when I was young and stupid. I was in Paris for the Revolution, and I cheered it on until it showed its true face, then turned my attentions to movements in Ireland and Catalunya. I well know how to recognize the signs of your breed." To say nothing of his shrewd analysis of odd friends and evasive answers, nor the occasional glances that he had given poorly coded, poorly hidden papers after his suspicions had first arisen..

"But you no longer approve."

"You're damned right I don't!" Stephen cried, smacking his palm against the wooden end of his armrest. "I disapprove about as much as a person can disapprove of a thing for two reasons. First: you're wrong. Sedition in the name of popular movements doesn't work. You've hardly given this new king of yours a chance, and your nation has had enough anarchy for at least the next decade. And don't you dare speak until I've finished," he snapped as Combeferre opened his mouth as if to protest. "Second, it'd be a damned shame to see you throw away your future and all it has to offer in a prison cell or – God forbid – on the paving stones in pursuit of some idiot, will-o'-the-wisp fantasy. I won't have it."

"…May I speak now?"

"Is it to confess the error of your ways?"

Combeferre looked at him over the rim of his spectacles and slowly raised his eyebrows.

"Fine, fine, but try not to be too insufferable."

"Well, Doctor, I have to say that I'm flattered. If I am correct, you would hold that it's my duty to be more careful with my physical person so that I may live longer and therefore do more good in this world."

"Crudely put, but yes. As a fellow friend to both science and liberty, I can believe none other. I very much doubt that your single added rifle would be enough to turn the tide of whatever battle you would fling yourself into."

"But you can't say that with any certainty. If I am indeed an individual of great drive and talents, then surely I can expect that my efforts might have a real impact no matter how I choose to apply myself. The fight is not purely a fight of the streets. I have no love of bloodshed, and hold out hope for peace. A single rifle may not tip the balance, but until things reach that point, I have other ways of contributing to the cause.

"Yes, fine, you won't give up writing clever pamphlets, I can see that. With as often as regimes change in this country, perhaps a stint in a cell would be a credit to your name in a decade. Even exile wouldn't be catastrophic; I could pass you off to a colleague in England or Germany."

"So clever pamphlets are to be permitted?"

"If I'm to have no choice," Stephen grumbled. "You do so love the sound of your own words that it would be more work that it's worth to silence you. But Combeferre," he fixed the student with what he knew to be his most unnerving gaze, then waited.

"Sir?" Combeferre prompted after a long moment of trying not to shift under those pale, unblinking eyes.

"Can you promise me that will be the extent of it? Write. Distribute. Organize. Agitate. Well and good. Fall in with Arago and his lot – they make no secret of their politics, but have no love of full insurrection. You're clearly going places, they're sure to take you in if you approach them. Can you stay out of the gunfire when your games get heated?"

"No," Combeferre said simply.

"No. No! Is that all the explanation I merit, then? That you have a death wish that won't be sated until you find yourself in the morgue?"

"That would be a less than ideal outcome, to be sure."

"But why, you idiot?"

In response to Stephen's rising aggression, Combeferre had let his palms fall calmly open across his lap. "Loyalty."

"To?"

"My friends. If we decide that the time has come, I could not let them go without me. Our group…we are closer than family, for we have _chosen_ to be of a single blood. You spoke of duty? I repeat the word in rebuttal."

Stephen gaped. "Your identification with a group of similarly suicidal idiots could trump all that you have to offer the world?"

"At least grant that duty pulls me in both directions?"

The old doctor nearly snarled, then remembered the heady days when a soul-deep friendship had meant more to him than any national or political identification. "If I humor you with my assent?"

"It then becomes a question of volition. If I am to fight for liberty, then it is only logical that I must believe in my own freedom of choice," Combeferre continued with increasing speed. "And because I am young and foolish, I find it more desirable to honor my immediate duty to individuals – to dear friends and brothers – than to the distant principles of Science, the State, and so on. So I think it fully defensible that –"

"Enough with this philosophizing! I care nothing for your pretty words and principles, simply that I've seen far too many good young men die for foolish reasons, and I won't see you added to their number! Look at him," Stephen flung the sheet off the cadaver and onto the ground. "This isn't a game or a scene from an epic poem or a page from a book of political theory. This is about the fragility of _your_ life."

"I know. I understand that. I fired a gun, and was nearly shot myself in July. I know I could die. But if I am to believe that revolt is again necessary – of which I am not yet entirely convinced – then who am I to say that my life is worth more than any other man's? The workingman with a family to feed. The –"

"I'm saying it, you dolt. That's why I'm wasting my morning with you. Your specific life is too valuable to place on the wrong end of a cannon."

"But what of you, Doctor? You risked your life every moment of the many years you spent at sea fighting Bonaparte. How was that any different?"

"Because I was doing something concrete against him, not playing at utopias."

"Concrete, as a surgeon? Mending bones and sawing off limbs? Even with your natural philosophy on the side –"

"I was an intelligence agent." How strange it felt, even after all these years, to be able to say it so freely. "And not a bad one, either. I dealt the French network a few good blows in my day. I won't claim that I ever tipped the balance of the war, but I confounded the other side more than once. So, to answer your question: yes, I risked my life at sea, but it was in the process of taking direct and effective action against the Empire. I was far more than a body in the way of the guns."

"Just as my work might end with me on a barricade, but that is a possible outcome, not the aim." Combeferre began to thoughtfully toy with the buttons on his sleeve. "A spy… I must say that I had wondered if saw-bones were all there was to that… But no, I think you undermine your point, doctor. You used information, intelligence, words to try to try to crumble Bonaparte's clay feet – knowing that it one day might end poorly in an episode of naval warfare. How is that so very different from what I –"

"It was the difference between risking oneself in the fight for the overthrow of a specific tyrant and thoughtlessly dashing one's life to bits on paving stones as though that will somehow bring about the millennium! You're too bright, too practical not to understand the difference."

"Likewise, you must surely know, Doctor, that you have just given me a false dichotomy. Regardless of his intentions, no man can know what effect his actions will have on history."

"Deny the reality of cause and effect and I'll throw you out of my office. Surely you know I hate to be out-skepticked."

"I study natural philosophy, Doctor; of course I believe in causation. It is more importantly _consequence_ that is obscure to our blundering attempts at progress. What if Napoleon had stayed in power, and his heir proved to be the greatest philosopher-king in history, establishing a _pax europa_ to preside over a flourishing of arts and sciences to last for a millennium? And what if his fall had led to the rise of an even greater tyranny?"

"We must work for what is probable."

"No, I think we care little for probability. We guess at future outcomes, but those guesses are never unbiased. All our predictions do nothing more than allow us work for the future according to those methods we understand to be _right_."

"And what's right is for you to get a bullet lodged in that brain?"

"Perhaps my political activities could lead to nothing, perhaps to my senseless death, perhaps to a worse king, perhaps to a better one, perhaps to the birth of a true and just Republic. I cannot know, but I can believe in the justice of my cause, man's propensity for the light, and therefore the inevitability of our eventual triumph. I am but a torchbearer."

"This religious fervor doesn't suit you in the least."

"What is God if not the ideal?" The line sounded too practiced to Stephen's ears.

"What idolatry is this," he snapped, "to raise your little political ideals to the status of a god?"

Combeferre stood suddenly. "To fight over this or that dynasty, or empire versus monarchy, that is little. To look to a tyrant as a representative of the divine, that is idolatry. But to want to bring humanity, all of humanity, into the light of the true –!"

"I'll talk politics all you like, but I warn you I'll have no patience for fanaticism!" Stephen shook his finger at his student's chest.

"What is 'fanatic' if not the word the timid use to discredit those who have to courage to _believe_? I believe, Doctor, and if you wish me to sterilize that part of my soul to continue working under you, then I will find supervision elsewhere. It would sadden me to lose your mentorship, but would be a comparably small sacrifice, particularly for one who has lived such a comfortable life."

That sounded particularly ominous. "So you believe strongly enough in this cause of yours that you would die for it?"

Combeferre slowly sat back down, his expression full of heavy joy. "There is nothing that could be greater than for me to freely give my whole self, if that is what is asked of me."

Stephen bit back a shriek.

"Get out of here. Leave. I expected better of you. I _know_ you know that death is not glamorous."

Combeferre stubbornly remained seated. "There is a world of difference between glamour and glory."

"Death is messy, sticky, and stinks of shit. You know what it's like to watch a man die of a bullet wound to the torso."

"Yes. And not just at the hospital. Last July, I tried to save a man, but his lung… It was too late. But I stayed with him through the end."

"Sometimes that's all there is to be done, but it is important work nonetheless – a better act than most men will perform in their lives. But what did you see of glory as he died?"

"He had trouble speaking, but he said nothing of regret"

"Combeferre, have you ever killed a man?"

Combeferre was silent for a long moment. "I don't know." He sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair. "I brought my armaments and fired a few shots, but I do not know if they found a target. I had the intent to hit someone – that's why one fires a gun – so in the absence of certainty, I have to assume I was successful. But I do wish I knew for sure. If I killed another human, I feel like I owe him that much: the knowledge."

There was nothing to be said to that. Stephen made a motion as if to stand. Combeferre was immediately on his feet, extending a hand to help him up. The solicitous little bastard even swiped the quilt off Stephen's lap as he rose, neatly folding it and tossing it over the back of his chair.

"I could turn you in, you know," Stephen glared once he had finished. "For your own good. For my good. For your country's good."

"You could, but you wouldn't."

Stephen harrumphed.

"What good would it actually do?" Combeferre countered, laying a light hand on Stephen's elbow. "Throw me in jail as one rebellion is about to break out, fine, but if that one fails, what's to stop me from participating in the next uprising?"

"It would give you time to cool some of your anger."

"Or to further fuel it through a personal experience of this regime's 'justice,'" Combeferre crossed his arms skeptically.

"I won't dismiss the possibility, but consider this: say that all your friends and associates get killed in the riot that you miss. As the sole heir to their legacy, I daresay you might be a bit more careful with your life."

"As a matter of duty?"

"Or freedom. However you would have it."

"I would have it neither way, for you won't do it. You're too principled, and too much a friend of liberty."

"Do you _know_ what fighting against Bonaparte meant? I strove to return a king to France! I swore oaths against the tricolor! I plotted with monarchists! How do you know I'm still not on their side?"

"With all respect, Doctor Maturin, I think your principles permit you to be on no side but your own." He gave a little smirk. "Unless you have now declared for the legitimists?"

"Hardly, but I still might have to hand you off to someone else, if you insist on continuing down this path. I don't see why I should waste my time instructing a walking corpse."

"A _possible_ walking corpse, Doctor, as are we all. But such would be your right."

Stephen sighed. "Be more careful. If we talk any more of this, you'll give me an aneurism, so try to hide it better in the future. And please think, _think_ about what it is that you really have to offer humanity."

Combeferre nodded solemnly. "Yes, sir."

"Now go. I'm sure we both have more productive uses for our day than waiting for me to get through your thick skull."

"Thank you, Doctor Maturin," Combeferre bowed deferentially and made for the door.

"But know I'll be watching you!" Stephen cried before he could fully retreat. "I trust you about as far as this cadaver could throw you!"

Combeferre smiled wryly. "I know, doctor. And should you ever find your old republicanism reawakening…" He tipped his hat. "Good day, sir."

"This is about more than your selfish dreams," Stephen muttered as he bent to re-cover the anonymous man on the slab. "Know that I won't forgive myself if I find your corpse at the morgue."

* * *

_If Stephen sounds like he's echoing the irritating "revolution is futile" strain that dominates many interpretations of LM, it's not because he doesn't get How the Nineteenth Century Works; it's because he gets it too well and is sick of it. Doesn't mean he's right, though._


End file.
